加勒特·洛德（Handshake）——网络效应

欢迎大家来到斯坦福大学的创业思想领袖研讨会，简称ETL。ETL由BASIS（斯坦福创业学生商业协会）和STVP（斯坦福工程创业中心）共同举办。我是Ravi Vilani，斯坦福管理科学与工程系的讲师，也是企业初创公司加速器Alchemist的主任。今天，我们非常激动地邀请到了Handshake的联合创始人兼首席执行官Garrett Lord。有多少人听说过Handshake？

So welcome everybody to the entrepreneurial thought leader seminar at Stanford or ETL. ETL is brought to you by BASIS, the Business Association of Stanford entrepreneurial students, and STVP, the Stanford Engineering Entrepreneurship Center. I am Ravi Vilani, a lecturer in the management science and engineering department at Stanford and the director of Alchemist and accelerator for enterprise startups. And today, we are thrilled to have Garrett Lord, the co founder and CEO of Handshake, with us. How many people have heard of Handshake?

好的。我很高兴。好的。看来Handshake无需过多介绍。大家都知道它是面向Z世代的职业平台，但可能不了解其背后的完整故事，其中蕴含了许多关于创业的重要经验教训。

Okay. I'm glad. Okay. So Handshake needs no introduction. You guys know that it is the career platform for Gen Z, but you may not understand the full story behind it, which packs in so many seminal lessons on entrepreneurship.

Garrett在底特律长大，在密歇根上半岛的密歇根理工大学上大学。在学校里，他遇到了同为同学的联合创始人Scott和Ben。然后在2014年，我记得当时他20岁，是大三学生——现场有多少人20岁或接近20岁？好的。我希望大家能设身处地想想Garrett的经历。

Garrett grew up in Detroit and went to college in the Upper Peninsula Of Michigan at Michigan Tech University. And then at school, he met his co founders, Scott and Ben, who were fellow classmates. And then in 2014, I believe as a junior at age 20 how many people here are 20 or within a year of 20? Okay. So I just want you to put yourselves in Garrett's shoes.

20岁时，他辍学了，真的开着一辆福特Fusion，住在车里，怀着创办Handshake的雄心。Handshake的使命是 democratize access to opportunity（民主化机会获取），让学生和校友建立有意义的关系，无需人脉、经验或运气。它真正挑战了可能是最难构建的业务之一——一个多边市场，如今正转型为AI优先的平台。市场型业务 notoriously（众所周知）是最难的，但一旦成功，也可能是最大的业务。

At age 20, he drops out, really goes and drives in a Ford Fusion and lives in his Ford Fusion with the ambition of starting Handshake. Handshake's mission is democratize access to opportunity by enabling students and alumni to establish meaningful relationships, no connections, experience, or luck required. And it really has attacked what's probably one of the most difficult businesses to build. It's a multi sided marketplace, and now it's becoming an AI first platform. Marketplaces are notoriously the most difficult businesses, but also the biggest businesses if you can succeed.

如今，Handshake拥有超过1700万学生、校友、雇主和职业教育者。Garrett和他的团队打造了一个惊人的网络，职业建议和发现转化为第一、第二和第三份工作。近100万家公司加入了该平台，他从Lightspeed和Kleiner等风投基金筹集了超过4亿美元。今天，我们旨在深入探讨这段经历，深入了解构建如今众所周知的Handshake所面临的挑战。那么，事不宜迟，请欢迎Garrett Lord来到ETL。

And today, Handshake has over 17,000,000 students, alumni, employers, and career educators. And Garrett and his team have developed an amazing network where career advice and discovery turn into first, second, and third jobs. Nearly a million companies have joined the platform, and he's raised over $400,000,000 from venture funds, including Lightspeed and Kleiner. And today, the intention is to really double click on the experience and go deep into the challenges that built the handshake that you guys all know now. So without further ado, please welcome Garrett Lord to ETL.

Garrett，显然大家都知道Handshake，但我不确定大家是否了解你。我理解Handshake真正源于一个个人使命，一个个人故事。你能从Handshake的起源故事开始为我们讲述吗？

So Garrett, obviously everybody knows Handshake, but I don't know if people know you. And I understand that Handshake really came out of a personal mission, a personal story. So can you start us off with just the origin story of Handshake?

是的。顺便问一下，这里有来自中西部的人吗？举手示意一下？我们有中西部来的吗？好的。

Yeah. I mean, anyone here from the Midwest, by the way? Show of hands? We've some Midwesterners? Okay.

我在密歇根州长大，在底特律都会区附近。我出身于一个工薪阶层家庭，并不是在抱怨什么。我父亲从事建筑业，生活不算太艰难，但为了交代背景——我是自己打工读完大学的。我在社区大学读了两年半，期间同时打几份工，想省钱申请转学到大学，后来转到了密歇根理工大学，这所学校位于密歇根上半岛。大多数人甚至不知道密歇根还有个上半岛。

So I grew up in Michigan, around Metro Detroit. And I grew up in a working class family, I'm not really complaining about it. My dad's in construction, things weren't that challenging but to kind of set the background, I paid my way through school. I worked a couple jobs while going to community college for two and a half years trying to save money on applying to go to university and I transferred up to a school called Michigan Tech which is in like the Upper Peninsula Of Michigan. Most people don't even know there's an Upper Peninsula Of Michigan.

我相信斯坦福的人可能知道。它距离底特律约八小时车程，离芝加哥六小时，是个相当偏远的地方。我选择它是因为他们有很棒的计算机科学项目，而且学费最便宜，同时接受了我社区大学最多的学分。我创办Handshake的原因是我在大一那年获得了一个实习机会。

I'm sure it's Stanford, you probably do. And it's about eight hours away from Detroit, six hours away from Chicago. So it's a pretty remote spot. I picked it because they had a great computer science program and it was the cheapest tuition that took the most amount of credits from my community college. And the reason I started Handshake is I got an internship my freshman year.

一位教授帮我介绍了他洛斯阿拉莫斯国家实验室的朋友。所以我从事了超级计算、InfiniBand和基准测试研究——更准确地说，在洛斯阿拉莫斯更多是基准测试而非研究。我遇到了很多来自斯坦福、MIT等顶尖学校的学生，并确信自己想要在硅谷闯出一片天地。我创办Handshake的真正原因是想让其他学生更容易找到实习和工作，因为密歇根理工大学只有大约200家公司来校园招聘，如果你学计算机科学，要么去Target工作，要么去惠而浦。

A professor helped introduce me to his friends at Los Alamos National Labs. So I did supercomputing, InfiniBand, benchmarking research. You can call it, was more benchmarking less research at Los Alamos. And I met a bunch of kids from Stanford and MIT and a lot of the top schools and kind of was convinced I wanted to break out in the Silicon Valley. So the reason I started Handshake was really trying to make it easier for other students to try to find internships and jobs because Michigan Tech was just There are only maybe 200 companies that came to campus and if you study computer science, you took a job at Target or you took a job at Whirlpool.

我并不是贬低这些机会，但当时硅谷的机会确实不多。我想让这种情况变得更加公平。

And I don't mean to despair those opportunities, but there weren't many opportunities in Silicon Valley. I want to make that a lot more fair.

我很喜欢这个故事，喜欢这个起源。那么决定辍学困难吗？是什么时刻让你有了足够的信念说‘我要去做这件事’？

I love that. I love that origin story. So was it difficult to make the decision to drop out or what was the moment when you had enough conviction to say, I'm going for this.

是的。让我把几个点串联起来——我提到去洛斯阿拉莫斯的经历，其实创办Handshake的推动力基本上来自所有顶尖学校的最优秀学生都说你必须来硅谷。他们说最难拿的实习是一家叫Palantir的公司——现在你们大多知道Palantir了。当时Palantir大约200人，是人人向往的实习机会。

Yeah. So mean to connect a couple dots, I talked about going to Los Alamos and really the impetus for starting Handshake was basically all the top students from all the best schools had said you needed to come to Silicon Valley. And they said the hardest internship to get was at a company called Palantir. Most of you guys know Palantir now. Palantir was about 200 people, it was like the coveted internship to get.

他们说第二难拿的实习是在Dropbox为Drew工作。这些是最难获得的面试机会。作为来自密歇根理工大学的学生，我通过Palantir官网申请后无人回应。但我非常坚定——我见过很多在初创公司工作的顶尖学生，铁了心要去Palantir工作。于是我开始冷邮件联系招聘人员，在LinkedIn上加他们为好友，最终得到了回电，获得了面试机会，并在大二时去Palantir工作了。

They said the number two internship to get was working for Drew at Dropbox. Those were the hardest interviews to get. And so coming from Michigan Tech, I applied to Palantir's website and nobody responded. And I was pretty convinced, I had met a lot of these top students that had been working at startups and I was really dead set on working at Palantir. And so I started cold emailing the recruiters and friending them all on LinkedIn and I got a call back and I eventually got an interview and I went to work at Palantir as a sophomore in college.

这让我快速进入了硅谷的世界，我遇到了一群年轻人。在密歇根州，我从未真正遇到过创办公司的人，比如软件公司。所以当我来到帕洛阿尔托的Palantir公司时，我问大家下班后都在做什么？他们回答说在创业、开公司、从斯坦福辍学、融资等等。在我印象中，在密歇根州上大学时做的兼职工作是修剪草坪、捡树叶、铲雪，而这里的人们却在从Excel、Lightspeed或Kleiner这样的机构筹集200万或300万美元。

And this is kind of Fast forwards me to Silicon Valley, I met a bunch of kids. I'd never really met anyone in Michigan that started a company, you know, like a software business. So I show up at Palantir in Palo Alto and I'm like what are people doing outside of work? And they're like I'm building companies, I'm starting companies, I'm dropping out of Stanford, I'm raising money and I'm like raising money you know. In my mind the type of jobs you did in college in Michigan were like you mowed lawns, you picked up leaves, you shoveled snow and people are raising like 2 or $3,000,000 from Excel or Lightspeed or Kleiner.

于是，我在Palantir实习结束后回到密歇根理工大学，开始告诉所有朋友他们应该去硅谷工作。Palantir实际上会支付5000到10000美元的推荐奖金，如果你推荐朋友加入。我大三的学费就是通过推荐密歇根理工的朋友去Palantir工作支付的。当我告诉我父亲我不需要申请学生贷款就能自己支付学费时，他终于给我打电话说：你搞的这些书呆子玩意儿居然真的管用。你知道，我从因为整天玩电脑而被禁足，到他终于理解了软件工程的价值。在Palantir的工作经历让我深受鼓舞。

And so I was like, I got back from that internship at Palantir and I got back to Michigan Tech and I started telling all my friends they needed to work out in Silicon Valley. And Palantir would actually pay you like $10,000, 5 to $10,000 if you referred your friends to Palantir and I paid for all of my school my junior year by referring my friends from Michigan Tech to Palantir. And so my dad, I mean he finally called me after I told him I was gonna be paying for school after not taking out student loans and he's like, This nerd shit you're doing is like really working out. You know I went from getting kind of like grounded by being on my computer all the time to like he finally understood software engineering. And I just left extremely inspired working at Palantir.

那是我迄今为止共事过的最聪明的一群人。氛围非常创业化，我能够直接与客户交流并开发产品。大约那时，我妹妹大学毕业了——她在各方面都比我更出色，成绩更好、更善于社交，但毕业后却遭遇了挫折。她不知道下一步该做什么，找工作非常艰难。而我却通过推荐朋友获得了这些推荐奖金。

It was the smartest people I'd ever worked with before. It was very entrepreneurial, I got to work directly talking to customers and building products. And around that time my sister graduated from college and my sister is like cooler than me in like every single way, she was like a better student, she's more social and she like fell flat on her face after school. She didn't know what to do next and she like was really struggling to find a job. So I was like, I made all this money on these referral bonuses from my friends.

我十分敬佩的妹妹却在为找实习和工作而挣扎。我的朋友们，我帮一个朋友找到了在Facebook基础设施部门的工作——很早以前在Dropbox工作，在Palantir工作。我的朋友们超级有才华。他们原本可能只能在塔吉特超市工作，而从密歇根理工去塔吉特的工作是安装销售点系统。我们学的是软件工程，但工作却是安装销售点系统。

My sister who I really look up to is like struggling to find internships and jobs. My friends, you know, I got my friend a job working on Facebook's infrastructure like way back in the day working at Dropbox, working at Palantir. My friends are super talented. The jobs they would have taken was working at like Target and the job you took from Michigan Tech where you had Target is you were installing point of sale systems. So we studied software engineering and your job was like installing point of sale systems.

那根本不是软件工程。于是我想，也许我可以像斯坦福的那些孩子们一样创办公司。这就是我告诉朋友们的原话。遇到了这么多创业的年轻人，也许我们可以尝试创办一家公司，让来自非名牌大学或因为地理或家庭原因缺乏机会的人更容易获得发展。

That wasn't software engineering. And so I was like, well maybe I could start a company kind of like the Stanford kids do. Really that's what I told my friends. Met all these kids starting companies. Maybe we could try to start a company to make it easier for people from non brand name schools or people that just didn't have access either via geography or due to their parents.

也许我们可以创办一家公司，让全国每个学生都更容易找到实习和工作。我真正分析这个问题时发现，不仅缺乏机会渠道——比如Palantir不来密歇根理工招聘，谷歌也没有一个校友来自密歇根理工，苹果不来，微软也不来。

Maybe we could start a company that makes it easier for every student in the country to try to find an internship, to find a job. And I really broke down the problem as like not only was there a lack of access, like Palantir didn't work Michigan Tech. Google, there wasn't a single alumni that had ever worked at Google for Michigan Tech. Apple didn't work at Michigan Tech. Microsoft didn't work at Michigan Tech.

学校其实不错，但地理位置太偏远，公司负担不起去那里招聘的成本。所以我真心想整合资源或改善学生的机会获取渠道，同时我们也想改善信息透明度。那时候，我相信你们很多人会搜索：APM是什么意思？如果你去斯坦福，就知道助理产品经理意味着什么。我应该去初创公司吗？

Mean it was a good school but it was just so far away that companies couldn't afford to go there. And so I really thought we wanted to aggregate or improve access for students to find more opportunities and we also really wanted to improve the information. Back then, I'm sure many of you guys do this search but what's it mean to be an APM? If you go to Stanford, know what that means to an Associate Product Manager. Do I want to go to a startup?

我想去大公司吗？校园里有太多信息了。如果你去宾大，会了解到所有关于银行业、精品投行和科技媒体电信行业的知识。要知道，我以前从没听说过高盛，也从没听说过麦肯锡。

Do I want go to a big company? Like there's so much information that's available on campus. If you go to Penn, learn all about banking and boutique banking and TMT. You know, I had never heard of like Goldman Sachs. I had never heard of McKinsey.

就像我不知道有人创办公司一样。所以我真的很想通过把学校联系起来改善信息获取渠道，也很想改进信息帮助学生们相互学习。于是我就辍学了，完成了实习，大三那年回到了Palantir。他们每月支付大约12美元，我觉得这好得让人难以拒绝。我回到了Palantir。

Like I didn't know anyone started a company. So I really wanted to improve the access by linking up schools together and I really wanted to improve the information of helping students learn from one another. So yeah, I dropped out, I finished my internship, I went back my junior year to Palantir. They paid like $12 a month so that was like too good to pass up I think. I went back to Palantir.

作为实习生，本科生。

As an intern, an undergrad.

实习生，是的。

An intern, yeah.

你肯定是当时薪酬最高的

You must have been the highest paid

很酷。知道吗，回到Palantir后，在周末工作的时候，我同时在忙Handshake。我大二暑假那年就开始做Handshake，从绩点4.0、课业表现优异、认真对待学习，基本上变成了——我推荐这种方式——挂了很多科。我们会做些有趣的事，比如去招聘会，当时我代表以前的GP，有4.0的绩点，在Palantir工作过。我们去招聘会，我 literally 能拿到18家、15家公司的面试，把自己安排得满满当当，然后我会坐下来对招聘人员说：什么？

was cool. And know, went back Palantir and like and weekends while I was working at Palantir, I was working on Handshake. I worked on Handshake my sophomore summer, my year, and I went from getting a four point o, doing really well in classes and taking that seriously to basically like, obsessively, and I recommend this, failing a lot of my classes. And would do funny things like we'd go to the career fair and I had like, at the time I was representing my old GP, I had a four point o, had worked at Palantir. We'd to the career fair, I would literally get interviews from 18 companies, 15 companies, schedule myself back to back and I would sit down with the recruiters and I'd be like, What?

我要反过来面试你。不想在Jackson National人寿保险公司工作。我可能因为这个录音惹上麻烦，但我不想在Jackson National人寿保险工作。你们怎么从大学招聘？怎么挑选核心目标学校？

I'm gonna flip this interview on you. Don't want to work at Jackson National Life Insurance. I'm probably getting in trouble with this recorded but I don't want to work in Jackson National Life Insurance. How do you recruit from college? How do you pick your core schools?

你们如何挑选学生？我其实在网上看过斯坦福的课程，就是彼得·蒂尔的创业学院课程。有人看过吗？是的，那是彼得·蒂尔在斯坦福的一场极具传奇色彩的精彩演讲。那还是Y Combinator非常早期的阶段。

How do you select students? I actually watched online the Stanford class, it was the Peter Thiel Startup School. Anyone seen that? Yeah, it's like a prolific legendary talk by Peter Thiel at Stanford. This is like really early days of Y Combinator.

保罗·格雷厄姆写过一些内容，他们就是一直强调要和客户交流、和客户交流。所以我会去招聘会，我们实际上还会偷偷混进其他学校的招聘会。我们混进了密歇根大学的招聘会，混进了西北大学的招聘会，混进了芝加哥大学的招聘会，我们就是和这些公司交谈，然后开始真正意识到真正的机会在于我们无法直接接触学生。获取用户实在太难了。这里很多人都是创业者，但我们觉得SEO行不通，付费广告行不通，推荐机制也行不通，根本没有办法实现规模化。

There's a little bit written by Paul Graham and they were just like talk to customers, talk to customers. So I would go up to the career fair, we actually would sneak into other career fairs. We snuck into University of Michigan's career fair, we snuck into Northwestern's career fair, we snuck into University of Chicago's career fair and we would just talk to these companies and we started to really stitch together that the real opportunity was we couldn't go direct students. It was just too hard to acquire people. A lot of people here are entrepreneurs but like we didn't think SEO would work, didn't think paid ads would work, we didn't think referrals would work, there was no way to get to like scale.

我们真正意识到需要与大学建立合作关系。大学可以成为我们获取学生和建立更广泛网络的合作伙伴。我们认为如果能让顶尖学校加入这个网络，我们就能吸引所有大公司入驻，而通过吸引所有大公司，我们就能鼓励这些公司从其他学校招聘，从而扩大在网络上招聘的雇主多样性。这就是我大三时的想法。后来我从Palantir回来后，为大四学年注册了课程。

We really had this insight that we needed to partner with universities. That universities could really serve as partners in acquiring students and building a broader network. And we thought that if we got the best schools on the network, we would sign up all the big companies and by signing up all the big companies we could encourage those companies to recruit from other schools and we could broaden the diversity of recruiters that recruit on the network. So that was my junior year. I then signed up for my senior year after I got back from Palantir.

我注册了大四的课程，但基本上都挂了。我所有课程都面临挂科的风险，因为我们当时正开车前往各个学校作为测试合作伙伴。我们会从密歇根理工大学开车前往不同的合作学校，获取关于我们应该为就业中心构建什么功能的反馈。这就是一些背景情况。

I signed up for my senior year and basically failed. I was on track to fail all my classes because we were driving to each one of these schools as beta partners. So we'd get in the car at Michigan Tech and drive down to different school partners and get feedback on what we should be building for career centers. A bit little of the background.

不，这太棒了。这里有几点经验我想强调一下。一是连接不同世界的价值，这是创业的一个常见主题。奇怪的是，你们斯坦福的学生其实有一种劣势，因为你们不像加勒特那样来自两个世界之间。当然有些人确实是。

No, it's fantastic. And there's a couple lessons I just want to underscore there. One is this virtue of bridging worlds is a common theme for starting companies. In a weird way, you guys at Stanford have a liability because you're not between the world that Garrett came from. Some of you are, obviously.

但这种连接世界以发现机会的能力，我认为是一个标志性的特质。另一个观点是，你们因为对这个想法如此执着而做出了牺牲。这就是将你带入Handshake的那条主线。现在我想开始谈谈具体策略。我知道你已经开始讲到这个了。

But that bridging of worlds to seeing opportunities I think is a hallmark thing. And then this other idea of you went through sacrifice because you cared so much about the idea. So that was sort of the thread then that pulled you into Handshake. I want to now start talking about tactically. And I know you're starting to go into this.

因为Handshake是最难构建的业务之一。从概念上讲，虽然市场平台是最大的业务——看看亚马逊，看看苹果，它们本质上都是市场平台。但它们既是最大的业务，通常也是最难起步的，因为你面临鸡生蛋蛋生鸡的困境。所以我想更深入地探讨具体策略，你已经开始谈到这个了。但Handshake是一个三方市场平台。

Because Handshake is one of the most difficult businesses to build. Conceptually, although marketplaces are the biggest businesses, if you look at Amazon, if you look at Apple, they're all marketplaces ultimately. But they're also the most they're the biggest businesses, but they're the most difficult ones to take off usually because you have this chicken and egg situation. So I want to dive deeper tactically, and you're starting to speak about this. But Handshake, it's a three sided marketplace.

是这样吗？是的。那么你能详细说说当你考虑要攻克的业务时，当时的动态是怎样的？你的方法是什么？在解决市场平台先有鸡还是先有蛋的问题上，是刻意为之还是偶然成功的？

Is that right? Yeah. So can you give color onto just the dynamics of when you're thinking about the business that you were going to attack, what were the dynamics and what was your approach, whether it was deliberate or just accidental in terms of how you hacked the chicken and egg situation with the marketplace.

完全正确。我认为每个人都明白，创办一个市场平台必须同时拥有供给和需求。你有充足的供给，但就会面临这个先有鸡还是先有蛋的问题——没有供给就无法获得需求。我们很早就意识到了这一点。最初我们把它叫做Handshake Trajectory，但学生们总是拼不对trajectory这个词，所以后来我们就改叫Handshake了。

Totally. Well, I think everyone realizes in starting a marketplace you have to have supply and demand. You have sufficient supply and you have this chicken and egg problem where you can't get demand unless you have supply. So we realized that pretty early on. Originally we had called handshake trajectory and students couldn't consistently spell the word trajectory so that was like we then called it handshake.

我们真正开始思考的是如何获取双方用户？如何吸引并入驻学生，又如何获取雇主？这实际上源自我们在招聘会上与客户的访谈，发现所有雇主都直接与大学合作。他们不断提到普华永道、麦肯锡、福特、通用汽车，他们一直说我去大学招聘学生，我报名参加招聘会就是为了招聘学生。

And we started really with how do we acquire both sides? How can we acquire and onboard students and how can we get employers? That's really where it came out in the interviews with customers at these career fairs that all the employers work directly at the universities. They kept on saying like PricewaterhouseCoopers, McKinsey, Ford, General Motors, they kept on saying I go to universities to recruit the students. I sign up for the career fair to recruit the students.

这让我们找到了每个学校的就业中心，他们负责谈论斯坦福学位的投资回报率。就业中心负责运营招聘会、校园面试、职业咨询，并报告学生获得了哪些工作。所以我们最初尝试为他们构建的是一个小的点解决方案。我们只是说，如果我们开发软件帮你更有效地吸引学生，你会购买吗？但很明显，他们真正需要的是一个完整的记录系统。

And so that really led us to the career center at each one of these institutions who's responsible for really talking about the ROI of your Stanford degree. The career center's responsible for running the career fairs, for running the on campus interviewing, for running the career counseling and then actually reporting out what students are getting what jobs. And so what we tried to build for them at the beginning was just like a small point solution. We just said, if we build the software that helps you engage your students more effectively, would you buy this? And it was very clear that what they really needed was a full system of record.

完整的记录系统就像……他们当时使用的是一个非常古老的工具，不是移动优先，毫无相关性，只是一个私募支持的老派现金流公司。问题是彼得·蒂尔在课堂上说过，你必须比现有解决方案好10倍才能卖给这些大学。这就是真正的洞见。如果我们能签约学校，学校就会上传学生数据，推动激活和学生参与度，他们还会强制所有雇主通过我们的市场平台来联系学生。如果你今天在斯坦福招聘，大多数来校园的雇主都被要求注册Handshake。

A full system of record is like they were using this really old tool that was not mobile first, had zero relevance, was just this private equity backed old school cash flowing company. And the problem was is that Peter Thiel in the class, he talked about you had to be like 10 x better than the existing solutions in order to be able to sell these universities. So that was really the insight. If we could sign up the schools, the schools would upload the students and drive activations and drive student engagement and they would also force all their employers to come through the marketplace in order to be able to connect with the students. And if you recruit at Stanford today, most of the employers that come on campus, they're required to sign up on Handshake.

所以通过赋能大学，这就像一个天然的客户获取渠道。我认为对我们来说困难的部分是这些大学会认真对待我们吗？我们当时才22岁，接管了校园里有Mac的计算机实验室。我们的摄影师朋友拍摄头像来制作简单的打印材料，发送给这些测验中心。我们发冷邮件，打冷电话，但都没用。

So it's like a natural customer acquisition channel by powering the universities. I think the hard part for us was can these universities take us seriously? We were like 22 years old, we took over the computer lab that had Macs on campus. Our friend that was a photographer took head shots to build like vanilla print out hand outs like send these quiz centers. We cold emailed, we cold called them, and nothing worked.

这些大学都行动相当缓慢。他们非常规避风险。对他们旧的系统很满意，真正推动前五个客户签约的是我们开车上门拜访。我们有点不接受拒绝。那时我已经辍学，朋友们已经毕业，我们在学校为此努力了两年半，我爸爸重新抵押了房子给我们开支票，我爷爷和爸爸开着福特福克斯去了密歇根上半岛。

None of these universities Universities are fairly slow moving. They're very risk averse. They were happy with their old system and really the thing that drove the first five customers to sign up was us getting in our car. We kind of didn't take no for an answer. At this point I had dropped out of school, my friends had graduated, we had worked on this for like two and a half years in school, my dad had refinanced this house and written us a check, my grandpa and dad drove up like a Ford Focus, the Upper Peninsula Of Michigan.

我的车一直抛锚，当时我正开车从密歇根上半岛前往各个学校。我爸爸说，我不太懂这些书呆子的东西到底怎么运作，但你对此非常着迷。他重新抵押了他的房子，写了第一张支票，他们开着一辆福特福克斯，我们就开始开车去各个学校。我们一路开到普林斯顿，一路开到威克森林大学，去了好多学校。芝加哥大学、威斯康星大学，我们甚至一路开到了丹佛。而我们获得会议机会的方式是写手写信。

My car kept on breaking down, driving to all the schools from the Upper Peninsula Of Michigan. And my dad's like, I don't really know this nerd shit how it totally works but you're obsessed about this. He refinanced his house, he wrote the first jack, they drove with a Ford Focus and we just started driving to schools. So we drove all the way to Princeton, we drove all the way down to Wake Forest, we drove to so many schools. The University of Chicago, the University of Wisconsin, we drove all way out to Denver and the way we got the meetings was from writing handwritten notes.

他们通常不会回复。我的意思是，他们可能会回复说‘哦，可爱的学生’。但真正起作用的是，我们为每一位大学职业中心主任定制了一个咖啡杯，上面印着他们的母校。如果他们毕业于密歇根大学，我们就印一个‘加油蓝色’的杯子，并附上一封手写信。如果他们说自己是密歇根足球粉丝，信的开头就会写‘我叫加勒特·洛德，我们是密歇根大学足球的超级粉丝’。你说你去教堂，我们就说我们经常去教堂。

They wouldn't really respond. I mean they would respond like, Oh yeah, cute students. But really what worked is we made a coffee mug for every single university career center director where they went to school. So if they went to University of Michigan, we'd print out a go blue mug and we wrote a handwritten note and it said if they said they were a Michigan football fan, the top of the note would be like, My name's Garrett Lord, we're huge University of Michigan football fans. You say you go to church, we're big church goers.

我们是基督徒，能否请您给我们三十分钟时间？然后他们会打开这个盒子，顶部是一个杯子，下面是我们穿着专业正装、在苹果电脑实验室里的打印照片。我们做了Handshake的仿Palantir夹克，因为觉得那样很酷，但印上了Handshake的logo，尽量让自己看起来专业。我们给他们写了手写信，然后他们就会回复邮件说‘好的，你们可以过来’。于是我们就上车，从密歇根上半岛开车出发。

Christians over here, can we please have thirty minutes of your time? And then they would open this box up with a mug on the top, a printout of us in the Apple computer lab with professional headshots. We built Palantir track jackets because we thought that was so cool, but we put Handshake on it, tried to look as professional as possible. We wrote them a handwritten note and they would respond to our emails and say, Yeah, you can come down. So we would then get in our car, we drive from the Upper Princeville, Michigan.

当时没什么钱，所以我们会…那时候星巴克的WiFi不如麦当劳好，所以我们会在麦当劳停车场后排睡觉，然后继续开车。

There wasn't much money to go around so we would like Back then Starbucks didn't have as good a WiFi as McDonald's did so we'd like sleep in the back of McDonald's parking lots and drive.

这是福特福克斯。我说的是福特福克斯

This is the Ford Focus. I said the Ford Focus

兄弟们。你知道，这方法奏效了。我们大概拜访了40所大学。我差点在普林斯顿被抓，因为我们会去每所学校的游泳池洗澡——包括你们这里。我实际上来过你们这里的游泳池洗过澡。

guys. And you know, it worked. We probably visited like 40 campuses. I almost got arrested at Princeton because we would shower every school has a pool, including you guys. I actually showered in your pool when I came here.

游泳池早上总是对学生和教授开放用于有氧运动。所以我在普林斯顿的游泳池里洗了澡，校园保安被叫来了。但这反而起了很大作用，因为主任说‘等等，你因为洗澡被抓了？为什么？’‘因为我们开车来这里，非常想见您。’他说‘那我来开会吧。’

And it's always open for cardio for students and for professors in the morning. So I showered in the pool at Princeton and campus security got called. It actually went a long way because the director's like, Wait, you got caught showering, why? Well we drove here because we really wanted to meet with you. He's like, I'll do the meeting.

他实际上是斯坦福大学职业服务中心的前主任，后来成为了普林斯顿大学职业中心主任。但由于我们的一些努力，我们的核心价值观之一是不留任何机会给偶然。我们做到了万无一失，全力以赴，成功签约了五所学校。公司建设的很多方面，我也要说，很多都是靠朋友帮忙，很大程度上也是运气。

He was actually the old Stanford Career Service Center Director that then became the Princeton Career Center Director. But because of some of those kind of hard work, one of our core values is leave nothing to chance. We left nothing to chance. We completely went for it and we signed up five schools. And then so much of company building, I'd also say a lot of your friends do it, lot of it's luck.

我们签约了这五所学校，结果完全是一场灾难。系统几乎无法运行。但我们接手了，实际上，创始团队分工合作，我们作为软件工程师在职业中心工作，一边修复系统崩溃，一边为他们开发功能，不断学习和积累经验。大约四个月后，当我们成功运营这五所学校时，我们的一家主要竞争对手收购了市场上第二好的解决方案，并强制将所有客户从第二方案迁移到第一方案。正因为那个时刻的奇迹、运气、时机、天时地利，我们得以吸纳斯坦福、密歇根、康奈尔、芝加哥大学和普林斯顿。

We signed up these five schools, it was a complete disaster. It barely worked. But we took over, we actually, founders split up, we worked out of the career centers as software engineers, building features for them as it was breaking and learning and learning and learning. And then the year after we powered, about four months into powering all five schools, one of our leading competitors bought the second best solution on the market and forced a migration of all the customers from the second solution to the first solution. Because of that moment, a miracle, luck, timing, right place, right time, we were able to suck up Stanford, Michigan, Cornell, University of Chicago, Princeton.

在这五所较小学校加入之后，它们全都加入了，这样我们就有了信誉。一旦有了信誉，我们就来到硅谷，筹集了种子轮融资，然后又完成了A轮融资。那段过程相当残酷，但之后的挑战依然艰巨。

They all joined after these five smaller schools had joined, and then we were credible. And once we were credible, we came out to Silicon Valley, raised a seed round, and then raised an A round. That was pretty brutal, but the rest is hard.

这是稀释最严重的一轮融资。那将会是最...好吧，这里有很多内容需要梳理。我只是想确保大家都抓住了要点。你知道这是一个双边市场。听起来第一件事是你们确定了需要先攻克市场的哪一侧，所以这是第一个关键决策。

It's the most dilutive round. That's going to be the most Okay, there's a lot to unpack there. So I just want to make sure that you guys are all getting the takeaways. You know this is a two sided marketplace. It sounds like the first thing was that you identified which side of the marketplace you needed to So get to get the that was the first critical decision.

如果拿下了大学，你们就能拿下企业客户。然后就是拼命努力，这在市场中非常常见。就是纯粹的拼搏才能达到目标。而这之后就能启动获得风险投资的飞轮效应，并且

If you get the universities, you'll get the corporates. And then you just hustle, which is very common for marketplaces. It's just like raw hustle to get there. And then that allows you then to start the flywheel of getting the venture capital And

这样就获得了所有学生和所有雇主。所以我们运营了这五所学校， onboarding了数十万学生和所有雇主，然后我们在第二、第三、第四、第五年专注于签约学校，签约学校，再签约学校。

that got all the students and that got all the employers. So we powered the five schools. That onboarded hundreds of thousands of students and all the employers and then we focused year two, year three, year four, year five, which is sign up schools, sign up schools, sign up schools.

对于大学客户，你们当时是优化货币化、用户参与度还是增长？你知道，对于那前五个客户，你们向他们收费了吗？

And with the universities, were you optimizing for monetization, engagement, growth? You know, with those first five customers, did you charge them any

不，我们向大学收费。大学为软件付费，但对我们来说，大学就像这些大学职业中心一样，他们关心帮助学生，并且非常重视吸引更多雇主。所以我们与他们围绕帮助学生和雇主管理达成了一致。前五年我们只专注于这一点。

No. We charged the universities. Universities pay for the software, but the universities for us is like these university career centers, they care about trying to help their students and they really care about engaging more of their employers. So we kind of aligned ourselves with them around helping them engage their students and helping them manage their employers. The first five years was the only focus.

我认为这些平台的成功很大程度上在于有一个明确的观点。我听了之前在这里的DoorDash托尼的分享。我们的观点是：如果我们签约了学校，就会启动网络效应。这个网络效应就是，比如密歇根理工大学，之前很少有硅谷公司去那里招聘。但一旦我们签约了斯坦福，所有硅谷公司都签约来斯坦福招聘。

I think so much of these marketplaces, I listened to Tony from DoorDash who was here. Much of it is just having a point of view. Our point of view was if we signed up the schools, we would start a network effect. And the network effect was that, I talk about Michigan Tech, like no, very few Silicon Valley companies recruited out there. But once we signed up Stanford, all the Silicon Valley companies signed up to recruit at Stanford.

是的。然后他们最终做的是点击'我想在密歇根理工大学招聘'。

Yeah. And what they ended up doing was then clicking I wanna recruit at Michigan Tech.

没错。

Yep.

我想在密歇根大学招聘。没错。普林斯顿上传了所有精品咨询和金融领域的绝佳机会。你猜怎么着？然后他们说我想在斯坦福招聘。

I wanna recruit at University of Michigan. Yep. And Princeton uploaded all of like the boutique incredible opportunities in consulting and finance. And guess what? They then said I want to recruit at Stanford.

是的。所以斯坦福职业中心就说，你们这些人，斯坦福职业中心说，我们在科技领域完全没有问题。

Yep. So Stanford's Career Center was like, you you guys, the Stanford Career Center was like, we have no problem in tech.

是的。

Yeah.

但我们所有的商科学生，我想用沮丧这个词来形容，就像，可用的机会比我们期望的要少。所以这种网络效应就像是帮助公司在更多学校招聘，从而增加了每所学校的机会数量。

But all of our business students, I want use the words frustrated, like, there's less opportunities than we'd like available. And so this network effect was like helping companies recruit at more schools which increased the number of opportunities per school.

当然。

Of course.

然后最终，大学纷纷加入这个网络以增加他们学生的机会。

And then it ended up, universities kind of flocked to the network to increase their access for their students.

是的。所以这些都是积极的反馈循环。太棒了。那么当你转向企业端时，是否有一个决定是关于选择四大、大型企业，还是选择那些会更快参与的中小型企业？这是一个决策吗？

Yeah. So it's all these positive feedback loops. It's fantastic. And then when you go to the corporate side, is there a decision about whether to go for the big four, the big corporates, or go for sort of small SMB players that would engage quicker? Was that a decision?

当你看到大势已定，你将被锁定在大学端时，你是如何决定如何进攻企业端的？

How did you decide once you saw the writing on the wall that you're going to get locked in at the university side, how to attack the corporate side?

是的。嗯，我认为硅谷的传统智慧历来是先从中小企业开始，然后向上游市场发展。就像那是大多数硅谷公司经过验证的真实策略。比如从其他开始，像Y Combinator。你在YC，你为你的其他YC朋友服务。

Yeah. Well, I think the conventional wisdom in Silicon Valley historically has been you start off SMBs and you grow up market. Like that's the tried and true tactic at most Silicon Valley companies. Like start with other, like Y Combinator. You're at YC, you serve your other YC friends.

然后YC里的公司成长，你适应他们的需求。你就像从下游市场开始。另一种思路是你先向上游市场进军，因为向世界上最大的公司销售可以学到真正的纪律。所以我们实际上决定先向上游市场进军，那是整个第二章。就像在签约学校的前五年之后，就是想办法如何转化那些免费公司，因为有一百万家公司使用Handshake，我们需要想办法将这些免费客户转化为付费客户。

And then the companies in YC grow and you adapt to their needs. And you like start down market. The other school of thought was you go up market first because there's real discipline to be learned around selling to the largest companies in the world. So we actually decided to go up market first and that was the whole second chapter. Was like after the first five years of signing up schools it was then figuring out how to convert the free companies because there's a million companies that use Handshake and we needed to figure out how to convert those free customers to pay customers.

我们瞄准了世界上最大的公司。所以如今，财富500强企业100%都在使用Handshake，而财富100强中有75%付费使用。这些世界顶级公司支付巨额费用，以便能够主动与学生互动。我认为在市场中资源非常有限，早期我们无法专注于让大学满意，因为你需要有可参考的客户、需要有客户口碑，净推荐值(NPS)必须非常高——这在一个方面就是极高的门槛。

And we targeted the biggest companies in the world. So today, 100% of the Fortune 500 uses Handshake and 75% of the Fortune 100 pay for it. So the biggest companies in the world pay a lot of money to be able to have to be able to proactively engage with students. And that was kind of like I think in a marketplace there's very few resources to go around. So we couldn't have early on focused on making universities happy because you have to have referenceable customers and you have to have customer evangelism and it has to be you have be 10x The NPS has to be super high.

因此我们集中精力攻克大学这一端，然后完全将注意力转向雇主，将大学产品放在缓慢迭代改进中，同时开始构建高级工具。但今年我们将实现2亿美元的年经常性收入(ARR)，核心业务将实现盈利，其中大部分收入来自世界顶级公司。实际上在过去18个月里，我们一直在构建自助服务和中等市场产品。

That's like a really hard bar just on one front. So we focused on one front for the universities and then we shifted our attention totally to employers and put the university product on slower iterative improvements and then started building out the premium tool. But today, this year we'll do $200,000,000 ARR. We'll be profitable as a core business and the bulk of that revenue comes from the biggest companies in the world. But we're now actually, as a business over the last eighteen months, have been building a self-service and mid market product.

你知道中等市场产品，我们在小企业端每周增加约100万美元的收入。因为我们已经掌握了如何向上市场拓展，我认为向下市场拓展要比向上容易得多。

You know the mid market product's like, we're adding like a million dollars a week on the small business side. So we've now, because we figured out how to go up market, I think it's much easier to go down market than

是的，我也这么认为。是的。你必须克服最初获得销售的那个挑战，但一旦你有了那种资历，我认为道路就会更容易些。这很有趣。我知道还有很多可以讨论的。

Yes, is up think so too. Yeah. You have to overcome that challenge of getting the sale initially, but then it is an easier path, I think, once you have that pedigree. That's interesting. I know there's a lot to discuss.

大约五分钟后我会开放提问，大家开始想想你们想问Garrett的问题。我想谈谈你们的联合创始人关系，因为我觉得与大学朋友一起创业这个想法很有意思。你们三位都还在公司吗？

I'm going to open it up in about five minutes, gang, so start thinking of questions that you want to ask Garrett. I want to move into your co founder relationships because I think it's interesting, this idea of starting a company with your college friends. Are all three of you still at the company

是的。

Yep.

你能谈谈如何维持良好的联合创始人关系吗？或者你从联合创始人关系中学到了什么？与朋友一起创业，你推荐这样做吗？对于未来可能和朋友一起创业的创始人，你会给出哪些重要的经验教训？

And can you talk about how do you have a good co founder relationship? Or what have you learned about co founder relationships? Starting companies with your friends, do you recommend that? What are the salient learnings that you would give to other future founders that might start things with their friends that are here?

是的，我认为与斯坦福大学起步不同的是，我们起点并不高。我的联合创始人曾在养鸡场工作，另一位联合创始人也是如此。对我们来说，创办一家公司并让它成功，这简直是一个疯狂的梦想。初期经历了太多，我不知道该怎么形容，可以说是血泪交织、跌宕起伏，我们几乎像是建立了兄弟般的情谊，我把这些联合创始人几乎当作兄弟。

Yeah, mean I think what's different than starting at Stanford is we didn't come from much. My co founder worked on a chicken farm. Farm and my other co founder. This was such a radical dream to even It was such a crazy dream to even think we could start a company and that it would work. And there was so much, I don't know, trauma at the beginning like blood, sweat and tears, highs and lows that we really built almost like a, you know, I call these co founders almost like brothers.

最初我并不认为Handshake会成功，Ben也不认为会成功，但Scott坚信不疑。他说：'伙计们，我们能行。'后来我们拜访了大约60所学校，只得到5个肯定的答复，疲惫不堪地开车18小时、12小时，身无分文，我父亲甚至抵押了整个房子。Ben和我一起经历了很多，这确实是一个梦想。能够建立这样一个组织真的很酷。

At the very beginning I didn't think Handshake was going to work and Ben didn't think Handshake was going to work but Scott did. And he's like, guys, we got this. Then sleeping in the back of these McDonald's parking lots after getting like we visited probably like 60 schools and we got five yeses. And you're just driving eighteen hours, twelve hours exhausted, no money, dad refinanced his whole entire house and Ben and I are like we went through a lot I think together and this has been a dream. I mean to be able to build an organization that like It's really cool.

房间里每个人都举起了手，他们都知道Handshake是什么。我觉得能够在一家真正致力于让学生体验变得出色的公司工作非常特别。帮助每一位学生——不仅仅是那些每周都能在校园里见到Sam Altman的顶尖大学学生，而是帮助全国各地的学生找到优秀的机会——这真的是我们的梦想，非常鼓舞人心。我认为这是一个对我们所有人都重要的使命。

Everyone in the room raised their hands. They know what Handshake is. I think it's really special to be working on a company where we're really trying to make the student experience awesome. It really is our dream to help every student, not just at the best university in the country where Sam Altman's on campus every week, but to help every student, you know, across the country find great opportunities, like that's really inspiring. So I think it's like a mission that matters to all of us.

我觉得能够创业是一段非常谦卑的经历，也是一个伟大的梦想。而且我们保持轻松的氛围。是的，我们保持轻松。比如，我的联合创始人是我婚礼上的伴郎。

I think it's like this has been incredibly humbling and like a big dream to be able to build a business. And then I think we keep it light. Like Yeah. I think we keep it light. Like, you know, my cofounder was my best man at my wedding.

比如，我们正在经历——我即将有孩子，我的联合创始人刚刚结婚。一起分享这些人生篇章很有趣。但确实，有些时刻非常艰难。我们肯定争吵过，肯定哭过，肯定有过几天互不理睬，甚至一度有人几乎想要退出。

Like, we're going through I'm we're about to have a kid. My cofounder's just getting married. Like, it's it's fun to share these chapters together. But, yeah, like moments are super hot. I mean there's definitely like we've definitely yelled, we've definitely cried, we've definitely not talked to each other for days, we've definitely been on the verge of like, you know, want some of us quitting.

但我认为我们作为人真的关心彼此，并且互相支持。

But I think we really care about each other as people, and we have each other's back.

你们有没有什么神圣的仪式或做法，一定会推荐给其他也是朋友关系的联合创始人？如果没有也没关系，我不想强求不存在的东西。我只是好奇是否有——我是说，我觉得

Do you have any sacred rituals or practices that you would definitely recommend to other cofounders that are friends when they start? It's okay if you don't. I don't don't fish for something that's not there. I'm just curious if there's any I mean, I think

我们一直认同的一件事，虽然有点不太舒服，但我们确实在每个阶段都会问自己：我们是否是当前角色的最佳人选？嗯。有时候这真的很具挑战性，比如要从重要的领导岗位上退下来。我认为你必须带着爱去面对，要知道我们是一起走到这里的，我们也会像老板一样——如果你不想做某件事，我们会为你创造一个新角色，让你感到开心。

the one thing we always agreed upon, which is a little bit, like, uncomfortable, but, like, we did is, like, at every step of the journey, we would always, like, ask ourselves, like, are we the best person to be in the role that we're in? Mhmm. So and at some points that's like really challenging to like, to take a step back from like a big leadership role. And I think you just have to approach that with like love and like, you know, just like we got here together and we're gonna you know, we also like, we're kind of the boss. Like if you don't want to do something, like we're gonna like make a new role and we're gonna make you happy.

是的，是的。现在我们有足够的资源来做这件事，但我认为从管理整个工程团队到尝试招聘比自己更优秀的人，那是一个艰难的时刻。但我们一直对彼此非常坦诚地提供反馈。不过，是的。而且这

Yeah, yeah. So now we have sufficient resources to do that but I think that's a really hard moment when you go from like, you know, running the whole engineering team to them like, you know, trying to hire somebody better than yourself. But we we always were like very candid with feedback with one another. But yeah. And this is

就是啊。

just yeah.

这简直就像一场梦。是的。我们住在硅谷，我们成功了，你知道的。所以我觉得我们很多人都对此保持谦逊。

This has just been like a dream. Like Yeah. We we live in Silicon Valley. We like made it, you know, like, So I think a lot of us stay pretty humble about that.

在公司达到数十亿美元规模的阶段，还能有三位联合创始人从最初一直坚持到现在，这是非常罕见的。领导者所获得的权威是一种巨大的竞争优势。有很多可以讨论的，我想听听你们的分享。我知道这一路上遇到了很多挑战。

It's very rare to have three co founders at this stage of a company when you're at the multi billion dollar stage from the origins. And there's such a competitive advantage of the earned authority that the leaders have. There's a lot to discuss. I want to open it up to you if you can share. I know there have been a lot of challenges in the journey.

我们没有时间一一细说，但我很好奇，你们愿意公开分享的最黑暗的时刻或最困难的挑战是什么？能否请你们分享一下，你们是如何应对的，以及是否有关于韧性或其他经验教训可以分享？

We won't have time to go through all of them. But I'm curious what's the darkest moment or the most difficult challenge that you feel comfortable sharing publicly? Can I invite you to share that and how you dealt with it and if there's any lessons on resilience or other lessons learned that you can share?

也许我可以分享一个有趣的和一个严肃的。有趣的是，当时很多人在这里创业或正在创业。当我们还是学生时，我们飞去了CalHacks，那时候黑客马拉松才刚刚兴起。我就是在那个时候认识了创办TreeHacks的创始人。大学——那时候还没有大学参与，所以大学不会注册使用我们的产品，但我们自己在用。

Maybe I'll share one funny one and one serious one. One funny one, so everyone, a lot of people here will start companies or are starting companies. When we were students we flew out to CalHacks which back in the day hackathons were just getting started. I met the founders that started TreeHacks around that same time. Universities, this is pre universities, so universities would not sign up for the product and we were using it.

因此我们希望在CalHacks活动中连接雇主和学生。我们主要负责简历投递功能，这是一个相当简单的服务模块，实际上只需要完成一件事。在场的工程师们可能会笑话我们。

And so we wanted to power the connection between employers at CalHacks and students at CalHacks. And so we powered the resume book drop essentially. It was a pretty simple service area. And there was really only one thing we needed to do. So for all the engineers in the room, can make fun of us.

只需要实现雇主注册和一个可浏览的简历数据库自助选择功能，非常简单。我们需要能让学生注册，并在雇主表达兴趣时能邮件通知他们。听起来对在场的一些工程师很容易吧？你们今天可能就能敲出代码。但我们在给学生发邮件的队列处理上搞砸了。

All you needed to do was power an employer registration and then a self-service selection of an explorable resume database basically, very simple. And we need to be able to onboard students and we need to be able to email them when an employer expressed interest. So it sound pretty easy for some of the engineers in the room? You probably vibe code that today. Well we got the queuing wrong on emails to students.

当时大概是CalHacks凌晨1点，这是第一届CalHacks，他们对我们抱有很大期望。那时我们已经开发Handshake约18个月了。结果我们基本上给每个参加CalHacks的学生都发了邮件，直到Gmail达到发送上限。我们的域名信誉还不错，估计给每个学生发了超过100封邮件，而且这些邮件没有集中在同一个邮件线程里。就像是：Garrett Lord、Garrett Lord、Garrett Lord... 我当时在CalHacks现场，学生们都在问：老兄，你收到这些Handshake的鬼邮件了吗？我的收件箱爆了。

So it was like probably 1AM in the morning at CalHacks, first CalHacks, they had like taken a bet on us, we had been working on Hintschick for like eighteen months at this time and essentially we emailed like every single student that went to Calhacks basically until Gmail would max out. I mean we're talking like, we had pretty good domain authority so I think we probably sent like over a 100 emails to every single student and it wasn't queued up in a single thread. It was actually like, you know, Garrett Lord, Garrett Lord, Garrett Lord, Garrett Lord. So I'm sitting there at Calhacks and like the students are like, dude, are you getting these frippin' emails from Handshake? My inbox is blowing up.

我只能说：是啊，我也收到了。于是我打电话给我的联合创始人，斯科特比较冷静，他说：我们有大麻烦了，老兄。大麻烦。我甚至不知道还有多少邮件在队列里，因为我们用的是Mailgun这种邮件API，已经向它发送了数十万次调用，这些请求都堆在队列里，而没有高级支持服务是无法取消队列的。

I'm like, what do and yeah, of course, me too. So I call my co founders and my co founder Scott's pretty stoic. He's like, we have a big problem, dude. We have a big problem. I don't even know how many emails are still queued up because we use Mailgun, like an emailing API, and we had sent hundreds of thousands of calls to Mailgun and it's just sitting in a queue and you can't cancel the queue unless you have premium support.

高级支持要等到下一个工作日才能申请。我当时特别尴尬，你想，我正试图在黑客马拉松上与硅谷的企业家们交流，结果却给每个伯克利的学生发了这么多封邮件。真是太尴尬了。我的联合创始人也...

You couldn't sign up for premium support until the next business day. So I kind of like was so embarrassed, you know, here I was, like trying to hang with the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs at a hackathon and just like emailed every kid at Cal like so many times. So that was embarrassing. And my co founder yeah.

这是第一个教训。你们只是一笑而过，然后继续前进？

So that's one. And you just sort of laughed it off and then moved forward?

我是说，确实很尴尬。我知道

I mean, was really embarrassing. I know

这很尴尬，但又能怎么办呢？你笑了

it was embarrassing, but what can you do? You laughed

一笑置之，继续前进。我是说，确实。

it off and moved forward. I mean, yeah.

是啊。是啊。就像是

Yeah. Yeah. Which is Like

很难。好吧。进行A轮融资确实很难。我是说，融资总是

hard. Okay. Raising the series a was hard. Mean, fundraising is always

发言人：是的。有什么你愿意分享的吗？有没有某个时刻特别艰难？因为现在，我是说，能处于你现在的位置真是太棒了。回顾过去，有没有感觉非常非常黑暗和困难的时刻？哪个时刻让你印象深刻，能分享一下吗？

SPEAKER Yeah. Anything you feel comfortable sharing? Is there a moment that was particular because now, I mean, it is fantastic to bask in the position that you're in now. Looking back, is there a moment that felt really, really dark and hard? And what was moment that sticks out to you and can you share?

我是说，当我们刚开始创业时，我父亲重新抵押了他的房子。我父亲非常非常努力地攒下这笔钱。所以这对我来说情感上真的很重要，我要确保我们能还给他。压力相当大。

I mean, so when we started the company, like my dad had refinanced his house. My dad had worked very, very hard to like save up this money. And so this was like really emotionally, it was really important for me to try to make sure that we could pay him back. It's like pretty stressful.

而且

And

我们原本在密歇根州筹款的方式是——我父亲在乡村俱乐部有朋友，所以我们会在乡村俱乐部向医生和牙医推销，筹集了大约255万美元。然后我们意识到从医生和牙医那里筹款真的行不通。于是我订了一张去硅谷的单程机票，当时我们基本上快没钱了，我父亲甚至从没想过给我们资助。我住在老Palantir朋友家的沙发上，不想太打扰别人。所以很长一段时间里，我基本上每晚都在不同朋友家轮流借宿。

the way we thought we'd raise money in Michigan was like my dad had friends at country clubs so we would pitch doctors and dentists at country clubs and raise like $2,550,000 dollars. And then we realized it was just not really working, raising money from doctors and dentists. So I booked a one way ticket to Silicon Valley with like, we were basically running out of money and my dad never even wanted to give us. And I lived on my old Palantir friends' couches and I didn't want to be too annoying. So I basically, like, would rotate between friends every night for a long time.

我想我在这里待了超过五个月。嗯。你知道，这有点尴尬。我的一个好朋友Alex Atala后来让我在他家里正经住了一段时间，之后他创办了OpenSea，现在又开了另一家公司。但确实，那段日子非常艰难。

I think I was here, like it was, like, over five months. Mhmm. You know, it was, like, kind of embarrassing. One of my good friends, Alex Atala, let me, like, actually properly live in his house for a while after a while, then started OpenSea and now started another company. But, yeah, it was really brutal.

我的意思是，基本上所有人都拒绝了我们。我想我见了超过150位风险投资人，然后只有一个人答应了。是的。我们给团队订了机票。我表弟辞去了酒吧的工作，开着U-Haul卡车横跨了整个国家。

I mean, basically, we got nos from, like, everyone. I think I had met over 150 venture capitalists, and then one person said yes. Yep. And we booked plane tickets for the team. My cousin quit his job at a bar and drove a U Haul across the country.

我们像所有硅谷斯坦福学生那样，在帕洛阿尔托接管了一栋豪宅，剩下的就有点成为历史了。但那确实很黯淡。我的意思是，筹款进行到第五个月，收到了超过150次拒绝。

We took over a mansion in Palo Alto like all the Silicon Valley Stanford kids do, and the rest is kind of history. But yeah, that was bleak. Mean, it just being on your fifth month fundraising and getting over 150 notes.

是什么让你在第151次会议时坚持去并获得了同意？我认为这是一个非常重要的教训。如果你没有去参加第151次会议，Handshake可能就不会存在。我的意思是，也许它仍然会出现，但是什么让你在第151次时仍然坚持下去了？

And what made you say yes to that one hundred and fifty first meeting to get yes? Because I think it's such a significant lesson. If you just didn't go to that one hundred and fifty first meeting, Handshake potentially wouldn't have existed. I mean, maybe it still would have, but what kept you going for that at that hundred and fifty first time?

把我父亲的退休金全赔光了。

Losing all my dad's retirement money.

好吧。

Okay.

比如，我说服了我所有的朋友辞职，就是，不去工作。是的。而且，大家都，相信我，相信我们。是的。我就像个运动员，我是个竞争者，我会戴上我的Gucci Mane耳机，戴上AirPods，一边跑步一边哭，然后告诉自己，你他妈一定能做到的，兄弟。

Like, I convinced all my friends to quit their job, like, not take jobs. Yeah. And, like, everyone had, like, believed in me and believed in us. Yeah. And I'm I'm like an athlete, I'm a competitor, like I, you know, I put on my like Gucci Mane and you know, my AirPods and like cry on runs and like just be like, you can fucking do it, man.

就像你能行的。真的就是，你知道，我会一边哭一边跑，告诉自己，你必须这么做。你必须做到。你必须想办法解决，伙计。我在Phil's Cafe那里放了个小牌子，当时情况很惨淡。

Like you got this. Like literally like, you know, I would just like cry and run and be like, you gotta do this. You gotta do it. You gotta better better figure it out, dude. I like had a little sign at like Phil's Cafe and like it was bleak.

但是是的，有一个人答应了，他们都是BCs，我不是要嘲笑——一旦有一个人答应了，

But yeah, one person said yes and they're all BCs, so I don't mean to make fun of Once one person says yes, the

接下来

next

其他人就都会

They person all says

跟着来。是的，是的。有道理。有道理。好的，谢谢你的分享。

follow each other. Yes, yes. Fair enough. Fair enough. Well, thank you for sharing.

这种对某人做出承诺并坚持到底的理念是一种美德。我想开放提问环节。如果有人有任何问题，请举手。我们会尽量让一个人提问，另一个人准备。那么，好吧。

This idea of having commitment to somebody and then following through that commitment is such a virtue. I want to open it up. So if anybody has any questions, just raise your hands. We'll try to get one person on and one person on deck. So maybe Okay.

请后面的那位女士到甲板上来，红区的人优先。哦，红区？能把麦克风传给红区吗？把麦克风换个方向。对，这样就行了。

Go to back, the woman in the back on deck, and the red zone will be first. Oh, red zone? Can you give it to the red zone? Put the mic back the other way. Yes, there we go.

谢谢。

Thank you.

你好。非常感谢。我叫威尔。演讲非常精彩。我只是想知道，在整个经历中，你是如何

Hi. Thank you very much. My name is Will. Wonderful talk. I was just wondering like really throughout all of this experience, how

做到的

were you

能够真正专注于你在Handshake提到的使命，即为每个学生提供机会，让他们度过美好时光、奋斗时期、恰到好处的时机，甚至将这一点延续至今。Handshake如何努力保持这一使命作为核心，并在未来继续坚持？

able to really stay focused on your mention at Handshake to like provide access to every student to really pass through the good times, through the hustling times, through the right place, right time things, and then even bringing that into a present. How does Handshake try and keep that mission as center now and going into the future?

这是个很好的问题。我刚才很困惑。我以为你真的把你的教室叫做红区。那里就像有个达阵区。那边有个达阵中心。

It's a great question. I was so confused. I thought you like literally called your classroom like the red zone. There was like a touchdown area. Touchdown center over there.

所以这很酷。

So that's cool.

所以我当时是想指向直播流。

So I was trying to point to the livestream.

你如何保持使命的持续？对我来说，真正起作用的是那些个人故事。你看，我们会关注很多关键绩效指标，比如首日、七日、三十日留存率，平均会话时长，职位流动性等等，有各种各样的指标，但真正让我兴奋的是与真实的人交谈。这是让这些数字变得真实的过程。我的意思是，这有点傻。

How do you keep your mission going? I mean, I think the thing for me that does it is like the individual stories. Like, you know, we look at a lot of KPIs, you know, day one, day seven, day 30 retention, average session time, job liquidity per you know, there's all kinds of metrics but the thing that really excites me is like talking to real people. It's about making these numbers like real. I mean, I have it's kind of goofy.

我有Google相册，里面有一个完整的相册，是我和其他学生一起拍的照片。我给你讲一个我经常想起的故事。大约一年半前，我在斯坦福的一个创业之夜遇到了一位学生。他是一位黑人学生，第一代大学生，来自田纳西州的一所小学校。他在Handshake上收到了微软发来的消息。

Have Google photos and there's a whole album of pictures I've taken with other students and I'll give you one story that I think about a lot. There was a student I met at Stanford at an entrepreneurial night. I came came down about a year and a half ago. He was a black student, first generation student, went to a small school in Tennessee. He got a message on Handshake from Microsoft.

他说他从未想过这甚至是一种可能性。他去微软实习，并得到了一份全职工作。他的家庭故事相当鼓舞人心，可以这么说，他去微软工作。然后，在微软工作的经历激励了他，他想来斯坦福。所以他实际上来斯坦福攻读机器学习硕士学位，因为他在微软受到了启发。

He had said he never like thought that was even a possibility. He went to go work as an intern at Microsoft and took a full time job. And his family story was pretty inspiring to go work at Microsoft, to put it that way. And then he got inspired, by working at Microsoft that he wanted to come to Stanford. So he actually came to get his master's degree in machine learning at Stanford because he got inspired at Microsoft.

然后，他现在即将完成硕士学位，他退学了——不，不是退学，是完成了学业，然后创办了一家公司。他走到我面前说，谢谢老兄。非常感谢你创建了Handshake。所以，这些个人故事对我来说才是真正重要的。我的意思是，我们发送了太多消息，学生产品可以变得更好，信息流看起来，你知道，你总是对你发布的第一个版本感到尴尬，但你知道，你就是不能放弃。

And then, he's now finishing a master's degree and he dropped out of his master's degree, or not dropped out, finished, completed school and then started a company. And he walked up to me and he's like, thanks man. Thank you so much for building Handshake. So it's like the individual stories are really what does it for me. I mean we send too many messages and the student product can get way better and the feed kind of looks, you know, you're always embarrassed about the first version of what you ship, but you know, you just like don't quit.

就像持续努力，不断尝试改进它。我们在Handshake有大约650人，他们热爱这个使命，非常关心帮助我们的大学成功，帮助我们的学生成功，帮助我们的雇主成功。但对我来说，这更多是关于故事，而不是关键绩效指标、目标与关键成果以及运营节奏。

Like keep working at it, keep trying to improve it. And we have like six fifty people at Handshake that love this mission and care so much about helping our universities win, helping our students win, helping our employers win. But for me it's less about the KPIs and the OKRs and the operating cadence and it's more about the stories.

这正是激励我的地方。谢谢你。我们去那边。接下来，之后谁想下一个？也许我们可以把麦克风传给那边的人下一个。

That's what inspires me. Thank you. We'll go over there. Next, and then who wants to go next after that? Maybe we can give a mic back there for next.

我？放手去做吧。是的。

Me? Go for it. Yes.

好的。类似的问题，但我认为你的拼搏精神和坚韧不拔真的很令人钦佩。绝对是斯坦福精神的体现。我很好奇，既然Handshake已经非常成熟了，你不再需要挨家挨户敲门请求大学加入。那么，你是如何在领导团队、新员工乃至整个公司中保持那种拼搏精神和奋斗文化的呢？

Okay. Kind of a similar question, but I think your hustle and your scrappiness is like really admirable. Like definitely Stanford spirit. So I'm curious like now that Handshake is super established, like, you don't have to go knocking on university's doors asking for them to join. Like, how do you maintain that scrappiness, that hustle culture, like, within the leadership team, but also, like, new hires and the entire company?

我觉得，这不是我的原话，但我会稍微调整一下表达：你无法教会一个人拼搏，要么天生具备，要么就没有。通常无论你取得多大成功，这种特质依然存在。哦，我们的首席营销官凯瑟琳就在这里，她可能是整个公司最优秀的领导者之一。

I mean, I think there's, like this is this is not my quote, but, like and I'm gonna I'm gonna mix it up a little bit. It's, you know, you can't You don't teach somebody to hustle. You either have it or you don't. Often times, no matter how successful you get, you still have it. Oh, we have our CMO, Katherine, here, and probably one of the best leaders of the entire company.

她无疑成就斐然，而且始终在拼搏。她热爱这样。如何保持这种节奏？我认为可以通过文化层面的措施，比如你认可什么、如何在财务上奖励、如何晋升。你可以建立一些体系来鼓励公司中特定的文化特质。

She's certainly very accomplished and she just hustles. She loves it. And I think how do you keep that pace up? I I think there are cultural things you do like what you recognize, what you reward financially, how you promote. There are systems in place that you can do to try to encourage certain kind of cultural attributes in your company.

比如我们非常注重细节。这是我们在全员大会上强调的文化特质，我们据此提拔经理，不留任何侥幸心理。这种'从不犹豫、直接行动'的理念，可能就是我的精神。但在真正的高管层面和领导层，人们天生就极具天赋。

We care very much about focusing on the details for example. That's a cultural attribute that we call out at all hands and we promote managers based on it and we leave nothing to chance. This whole idea of just never wondering what if, just go for it, right? That may be my spirit. But the really the c team level and their true leadership level, people are just naturally super gifted.

他们有点'疯狂'，他们真心在乎，执着于对世界产生影响，似乎没有什么能阻挡他们。我不确定这是否能教会。我相信在座的很多人都有这种特质，因为你们在全世界最好的学府（下午5:11）。你们显然渴望学习。我想鼓励一点——虽然这不是你的问题——如果你要创业，尽量做一些对世界真正有意义的事情。

They like, they have a screw loose, they really care about, they're hell bent on making an impact on the world, and like nothing can stop them. And I think I don't know if you can teach that. And I'm sure many of you have it because you're at the best school in the entire world here at 05:11PM. So you guys clearly want to learn. I think the one thing I would just encourage, I know this isn't your question, I would just, if you're ever going to start a company, try to do something that really matters to the world.

这是我真正想强调的：每个人都很聪明，职业生涯中能赚很多钱。我想在Palantir工作的原因是他们在产生影响。我负责国家儿童剥削防治中心的项目，帮助该中心寻找儿童 predators（侵害者）。

That's the one thing I would really, everyone's so smart, there's so much money to be made over the course of your career. The reason I wanted to work at Palantir is because they're making an impact. I work on the National Center for Misusing Exploited Children. So that was my project. Helping the National Center for Misusing Exploited Children find child predators.

我一直热爱在科技与影响力的交汇处工作。所以，我只是，不知道怎么说，食品配送很酷，但我只是，抱歉这么说有点粗鲁。但我更想尝试做一些真正能对世界产生影响的事情。

So I have always loved working at the intersection of tech and impact. And so I just, I don't know, grocery delivery is cool but I just, sorry that was rude. But I would try to do something that really makes an impact on the world.

很棒。我们要回到后面，我想，回到后排。那么接下来谁想发言？请举手示意。想接下来发言的请举手。好的。

That's great. We're going to go back, I think, to the back. Then who wants to go next if you raise your hands? Raise your hands if you want to be on deck. Okay.

接下来我们请这边发言。好的。

We'll go here next. Okay.

是的。非常精彩的演讲。非常感谢您的到来。您之前提到早期是和联合创始人一起自己搭建的。我想问接下来是什么？

Yeah. Awesome talk. Thank you very much for coming. You mentioned early kind of building it yourself with your co founders. I'm what was next?

在早期阶段，您是如何从那个阶段过渡到招募所需的不同人才来帮助迈出下一步的？

Like in the early days, how did you transition from that into recruiting kind of different talent that you needed to help take the next step?

是的，我认为那种模式转换相当快。你会从'默认死亡'的状态——你知道公司还没走上正轨——转变为投资增长的模式。我的意思是，钱能做两件事：要么压缩时间，要么延长时间。我觉得这是一种有趣的思考方式。你用风险资本的钱要么买足够的时间来摸索出路（当你处于'默认死亡'状态时），要么用钱来加速、压缩时间并快速成长。

Yeah, I mean I think there's that mode switch is pretty fast. You go from like default dead, you know your company's like just not on track to like you know investing in growth. I mean money does two things, it either compresses time or extends time. I think that's a fun way to think about it. You use venture capital money to either like buy yourself enough runway to figure it out and you're default dead or you use money to speed up and compress time and grow really quickly.

所以模式转变了，我花了一些时间才从那种密歇根蓝领、注定失败、被拒绝150次、备受打击的心态，转变为'哇，这家公司成功了，我们需要快速成长'。我提到过的Drew Houston，在我那个时代，Dropbox是最酷的公司，真的很棒。他有一个播客，我们谈到你必须每六个月重塑自己。我对此深有感触，比如如何让自己身边围绕着我能够学习的人？我对此坚持不懈，真的努力去弄清楚我需要学习什么来建立这个业务。

And so the mode shifts, it took me a little while to shift that mode from like Michigan blue collar, gonna fail, 150 no's, crush the face, to like wow, this company's working, we need to grow quickly. There's Drew Houston I talked about back in my day that was like the coolest, it was a really cool company, Dropbox, back in the day. And he had this podcast that we talked about like you have to reinvent yourself every six months. And I took that really to heart, like how do I surround myself with people that I can learn from? And I was just like unrelenting about that, just like really trying to figure out like what I need learn to to build this business.

建立业务运营职能意味着什么？招聘产品经理意味着什么？组建设计团队意味着什么？开展高端市场销售意味着什么？但我的做法是——我也鼓励你们都这样做——我读了几篇博客文章，然后从男士服装店买了一件运动外套，就飞去了纽约。

What does it mean to build a biz ops function? What does it mean to hire product managers? What does it mean to build a design team? What does it mean to do up market sales? But the way I would do it is, and I encourage you all to do it, is like, I read a couple blog posts and then I bought a sport coat from men's warehouse and I like flew to New York.

我和我们的首席营收官住在酒店里，基本上就是去敲大公司的门，不接受拒绝，自己摸索解决方案。工作中没有什么事情是你搞不定的。我的意思是，我认为你必须相信自己能解决任何问题。也许你搞不懂OpenAI规模的变压器工作原理，但除此之外你都能搞定——我向你保证产品营销没那么难，我向你保证客户经理的工作也没那么难。

And I like lived out of a hotel with our CRO and we just knocked on the doors essentially with the big companies and just like didn't take no for an answer and figured it out. And like nothing at work is something you can't figure out. I mean, I just like, I think you have to have that you can figure anything out. I mean, maybe you can't figure out how a transformer works at OpenAI scale and what's actually happening but other than that you can figure out, I promise you product marketing is not that hard. I promise you the job of an account executive is not that hard.

虽然困难且需要同理心，但你能学会创建公司所需的一切。我会努力让自己身边围绕可以学习的人，并且会坚持不懈地主动约见——我想见你，我想见你，我想见你。能给我半小时时间吗？能给我半小时时间吗？我在创建Handshake时从那些创建过伟大公司的人身上学到了很多。

It's hard and have you to have empathy for it, but like you can figure out everything you need to build a company, and I would just really try to surround yourself with people that you can learn from. And I would be extremely unrelenting about just being like, I want to meet with you, I want to meet with you, I you, I want to meet with you. Can I please get half an hour? Can I please get half an hour? But I learned a lot at building Handshake from other people that had built great companies.

不是通才而是专家。与公司的CTO讨论工程团队规模化，与人力资源负责人讨论如何担任首任人力主管。你总是在尝试匹配优秀模式的模样，规划未来六个月的发展。我认为现在我的重要工作是领先于团队，更长远地思考未来，串联各个环节，想清楚未来我们需要擅长什么。举个有趣的例子：我们目前最大的业务板块正在快速成为核心业务，将实现2亿美元年度经常性收入。

And not like generalists but like specialists. Talking to CTOs of companies talking about scaling an engineering organization or talking about the heads of people, talking about how you're first head of people. You're always just trying to pattern match on what good looks like and figure out the next six months. And I think the important job now for me is like being ahead of my team, thinking farther into the future to connect the dots and like figure out like what do we need to get good at in the future. I mean a fun example of that just to share is like we're one of the largest parts of our business right now is help or what's quickly becoming like our core business will do $200,000,000 ARR.

我们正在构建的新业务增长速度将远超核心业务——帮助基础模型公司寻找数据标注人员，特别是围绕STEM推理领域。比如提示响应配对（由于我们在工程大楼，很多人能处理这个），具体就是拆解提示问题，逐步进行思维链推理，最后得出真实答案，这些被用于监督微调或强化学习。我们拥有50万名博士和300万名硕士生的资源，直接与这个行业快速发展的公司竞争，而学生们信任我们，希望每小时赚100美元来训练这些模型。

We're building a new business that will grow much, much faster than our core business and that's helping the foundational model companies find people to do data annotation. Specifically around like stem reasoning. So it's like prompt response pairs, we're in an engineering building so I think a lot of people can handle this but it's like the actual soda breaking prompt then the step by step chain of thought reasoning and then the ground truth answer and they're using that for supervised fine tuning or reinforcement learning. And we have access to 500,000 PhDs and we have access to 3,000,000 master's students. So we're like directly competing with companies that are exploding in this industry and we have students that trust us and want to make 100 an hour training these models.

所以这个业务需要我自己摸索。我本可以坐在那里说'我不了解这个领域，不知道发生了什么'。但我整个圣诞假期到新年期间，每隔一天就乘飞机去见人——从凤凰城飞到圣何塞，从凤凰城飞到西雅图，当天就返程回家，心想：我他妈一定要...抱歉，我一定要把这事搞明白。不，

And so that business is like, I had to figure it out. And I could have sat there and been like, I don't know the space, I don't know what's going on, you know. I spent Christmas break all the to New Year's like taking flights like every other day, like going to speak to people, flying from Phoenix to San Jose, from Phoenix to Seattle, turning around the same day flying all the way home, being like I'm going to fucking Sorry. I'm going figure this No,

太棒了。我欣赏这种激情。我喜欢

that's great. I love the passion. I love

这份激情。我要搞清楚这个问题。我要把这事弄明白。是的。现在我们正在解决它。

the passion. I'm going figure this out. I'm going to figure this out. Yeah. And now we're figuring it out.

我们就像，你知道，我们正在月复一月地翻倍增长，Handshake正在爆发式增长。而这正是通过，你知道，你只需要全身心投入其中。

And we're like, you know, we're doubling month on month and it's it's exploding at Handshake. And that's using, you know, so you just have to throw yourself in there.

最后一个问题。是的。

One last question. Yes.

是的。我只是好奇，感觉很多初创公司的建立很大程度上取决于出色的拼搏精神和与客户沟通。拼搏精神无关你拥有什么技能，重要的是你做了什么。我好奇的是，你认为与客户交流并解决问题是构建Handshake所需的主要特质吗？

Yeah. I'm just curious about, it feels like a lot of startup building is a function of great hustle and you talking to customers. Hustle just by whatever skills it doesn't matter what skills you have. It matters what you do. What I'm curious about is, do you think that talking to customers and figuring out stuff are the main attributes for you to have built Handshake?

还是有一些其他的元因素在这个旅程中帮助了你？

Or are there some other meta things that have perhaps helped you in this journey?

六十秒内回答。是的。是的。

In sixty seconds. Yeah. Yeah.

我认为硅谷有两种故事。一种是在正确的时间出现在正确的地点，站在你无法错过的浪潮之上。你可以是世界上最差的冲浪者，你划啊划，划得很烂，但浪潮就会抓住你并将你推向巅峰。硅谷有很多大公司都是这样。但我认为当你成为一个真正合格创始人时，你会看着那些其他创始人说：兄弟，故事很酷。

I mean I think there are two tales in Silicon Valley. People that are at the right place at the right time behind a wave that you can't miss. And you can be the worst surf in the world and you paddle paddle and you suck at paddling and the wave just catches you and blows up. There are a lot of companies in Silicon Valley that are huge. But I think when you get like really legit as a founder you kind of look at those other founders you're like, cool story bro.

然后还有一些公司，你知道，大多数公司我认为只是停留在执行层面，就像说得好听不如做得实在，自己想办法解决。我认为与客户沟通非常重要，在正确的时间出现在正确的地点非常重要，思考公司战略非常重要，考虑竞争对手可能也很重要，这取决于你所在的行业。是的，我只是... 是的，我在这方面没有一个完美的答案。

And then there are companies that like, you know, most companies which I would say is just living in the execution, like talk is cheap, figure it out. And I think it's a lot about talking to customers is super important, being in the right place at the right time is super important, thinking about the strategy of the company is super important, thinking about the competitions may be important depending on your industry. Yeah, I would just Yeah, I don't have a perfect answer there.

根据你的经验，有没有什么方法可以人为地创造运气？

Is there any way that you can engineer luck in your experience?

是的。我的意思是，也许可以用一个有趣的类比，比如你想让我在纽约的某个棒球场打出一记本垒打，然后你拍摄我四周的时间尝试做到这一点，什么是运气？是我在第三天的下午七点打出了一记本垒打，而你只看到了这个吗？

Yeah. I mean if you maybe a fun analogy of like, you you want me to hit one home run out of New York, you know, out of some ball stadium and you film me over four weeks trying to do it, what is luck? Did I hit it on the third day at seven P. M. In the afternoon and hit one home run and that's all you saw?

那是运气吗？还是我只是在那里花了四周时间尝试打出本垒打？我不知道。所以这就是我的答案。

Is that luck? Or was I just there for four weeks trying to hit home runs? I don't know. So that would be my answer.

是的。如果你在活动发生时在场，那么你就赢了。是的。这很棒。这很棒。

Yeah. If you're present when the activity happens, then you win. Yeah. That's great. That's great.

好吧，说到这里，我将结束这次ETL讨论。请大家和我一起感谢加勒特·洛德。

Well, that note, I'm going to draw this ETL to a close. Please join me in thanking Garrett Lord.